


it's all blood and sweat (life is what you manage in between)

by Losseflame



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: F/M, M/M, Post-Apocalypse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-19
Updated: 2013-01-19
Packaged: 2017-11-26 03:04:57
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,046
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/645857
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Losseflame/pseuds/Losseflame
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It is a year and a half since the world ended, the cicadas are buzzing loudly in a time that used to be considered out of season, and Lydia is being brilliant.  Not that this is particularly surprising.</p>
            </blockquote>





	it's all blood and sweat (life is what you manage in between)

It is a year and a half since the world ended – not completely, though, because Stiles is still standing on ground and breathing in air and is alive, sort of, in that his heart is beating – the cicadas are buzzing loudly in a time that used to be considered out of season, and Lydia is being brilliant.

Not that this is particularly surprising, as Lydia’s brilliance has become one of the defining facts of the world, frequently tested and always proven true – the sun rises in the east, humanity is an endangered species, Lydia Whittemore-Martin is and always will be brilliant. Three comes after two, one comes before the both of them, etcetera. Nevertheless, he shifts uneasily, adjusting and readjusting his grip on the dented aluminum bat he carries; Lydia’s stroke of brilliance had come when they were still unsheltered, sun high enough in the air that they’re easily seen by anything. It’s enough to make him feel twitchy, exposed, and for all that he agrees with Lydia’s scathing statement that they need a better way to carry their shit, he’s not sure that stopping to make a sled out of the detritus of an old town they hadn’t even scoped out yet is the best way to go about it.

He says nothing, though, just keeps his weight on the balls of his feet, swinging the bat from side to side to hear the whistle of it in the air. To hear if any cracked, rabid voices start echoing the sound of it back to him in crazed laughter. Lydia doesn’t ask for help and he doesn’t offer – there is, after all, a system they have in place, one made through trial and some errors better left forgotten. Stiles is the brawn of the operation now, his own particular brand of brilliance shunted off to the side for Lydia’s more practical application of intelligence.

It might say something, he thinks, about how bad things have gotten, if he’s relied on to be the brawn of any operation. He doesn’t think this bitterly anymore, just…flatly, plainly. He is not as strong as a man could be, muscle-wise, but he’s not as weak as he used to be, either, and he supposes they have to work with what they’ve got. 

As demonstrated by Lydia. 

“There.” The girl in question declares with a toss of her head a few minutes later. The engagement ring for the wedding she never got a chance to have glints in the sunlight, a key hanging from a chain around her neck, and Stiles wants to mention it the way he always does, about giving the things they might meet as they travel more stuff to grab onto to yank her towards them. But Lydia had already sheared off her hair, same as him, wincing every time she saw it on the ground, where it looked damaged and frayed the way it never did before. (It probably meant more to her than it did to him; that hair used to be like her crown, Stiles guesses, beautiful and well-taken care of, something to be proud about, something that people’s eyes followed when she marched down hallways of the school she owned. _He_ still thinks she’s beautiful, with uneven, spiky half-knots framing her head. Looks more like a crown that way, actually.)

So instead he examines the sled, its shoulder straps and the neat way their clothes, food, and miscellaneous are tied down to it. “It’s good. Good stuff, there.” Stiles waves his hands over the thing like a blessing, reaching for the straps. “So good, actually, that I just need to wrap these gorgeous straps around myself and walk with it, you know, get to know it. Maybe take it out to dinner –”

“Stop talking.” Lydia rolls her eyes, a half-smile curled around the edges of her mouth like a secret. She looks like she wants to protest Stiles pulling the sled for a moment – after all, he was carrying the most of their supplies on his back before, he carries the bat, he’s demonstrated a slight self-sacrificial tendency more than once, if it looks like it’ll give her the chance to run – but she doesn’t, in the end. Just stretches and starts to walk with him, out of the broken remnants of the town to edge their way carefully around it.

(‘Never go through a town if they can help it, if they don’t need more medical supplies or canned food’ is one of the rules they learned hard. Stiles has a jagged scar from a piece of glass wielded like a weapon down his right shoulder blade, Lydia has a crooked nose from when she was slammed into a brick wall, and neither of them have Danny anymore.) 

They’re both a little fucked up, is why she doesn’t say anything, and they’ve learned how to work around each other’s complexes over the time they’ve spent surviving together. If Stiles needs to play martyr, if Lydia needs to have her words _obeyed_ when she spits them out sharply enough – 

They’ll work with that.

.:.:.

The problem is, the virus doesn’t kill all of its victims. It probably wouldn’t have been all that bad if it did, because then there might have been a fuckton of bodies but not everyone caught the virus, alright, if they played careful. If they were immune. 

The problem is, the virus _changes_ some of its victims.

Stiles used to catch a few episodes of that show every once and a while, the one with the touchy feely brothers who hunted monsters; he’d liked that show more and more as shit in his life migrated farther and father south, really identified with what they had to deal with – even though the werewolf episode did piss him off, just a little bit. The virus changes the people it doesn’t kill the same way a virus on that show did, makes them violent, neurotic, cannibalistic. Gets rid of the barriers that would drop any other person, like the feeling of hunger and pain and dehydration, sunburns so deep red the skin splits open, peels back to reveal muscle. 

It’s lacking the dramatics available in the show – the freaks (they have to call the fuckers something, after all, and Lydia shouts that loudly and angrily as she kills them, sometimes, so it sticks) don’t plan together, or talk, or disappear into the night when they’re done wreaking havoc. They’re never done wreaking havoc, in the first place, and Stiles doubts that the cause is demonic. They just…eat, scream, hide, riptearshred through whatever gets close enough for them to chase and die, eventually, of exposure or starvation or wounds they don’t seem to feel.

They’re fucking terrifying, and no one was prepared for them when the first wave of sickness hit. 

That’s probably why everything went to hell in a hand basket so quickly, actually – no one, military or civilian or supernatural, expects that anyone would wake up after sweating through a sickness that kills in two days or less to reach for the nearest person and bite their throat out. 

(That’s how the pandemic in Beacon Hills changed, just like that. Stiles had seen it. After all, the sheriff had been the first one to go freak, at least in his town, and Melissa McCall had been the nearest person. She’s insisted on being his dad’s nurse, to help her friend through something she was sure would kill him.

It didn’t. It did worse.)

.:.:.

Sometimes, when the stars align just right and the night is still enough they could here freaks coming a mile away and they find a house that’s so isolated they feel comfortable staying there for a couple days, he and Lydia fuck.

It’s not a big deal, really, not the way he thought it would be when he was sixteen and stupid over this girl and just young enough to believe that it was real. He’s not sixteen anymore, not young enough to believe in much of anything, and he still has the memories of someone else’s lips, rougher and angrier and _hungrier_ , tattooed onto his nerve endings.

But sometimes, they fuck.

Tonight seems to be one of those times, and it starts with an order, because Lydia likes being in control, likes being obeyed, and Stiles likes keeping her as happy as she can be.

“Get naked.” She says, the words loud against the silence they usually keep, long having moved on from needing to talk to one another to feel comfortable together. Stiles glances up at her, grins at her sharply raised eyebrow, the freckles smattered across the bridge of her crooked nose that rise when she doesn’t have access to sunscreen and concealer, her lips, pursed together prissily. 

They are in a old house miles out from the town they made the sled in, emptied of the corpse they’d found in the kitchen, it is quiet enough that they could hear freaks coming from a mile away, and Stiles should have seen this coming. 

“You sure, princess?” He asks, but he’s already sliding off the master bed, hands moving to the hem of his shirt and then to his belt. The question has two meanings, and Lydia answers them both as she strips efficiently.

Nearly a year without proper bras had made her breasts go slacker than they used to be, the key framed between them in a way that Stiles thinks is pretty, sort of. He reaches to get his hands on them, to feel the weight of them, and she slaps his wrists away sharply, pushing him down to the bed. He goes down easily. 

She climbs over him and perches on his stomach, thighs framing his body. Lydia feels warm and safe-dangerous, presence heavy and familiar. “Of course I’m sure.” Lydia rolls her eyes, voice hitched in half-faked annoyance, slight smile that she always gets when Stiles double-checks her willingness obvious in her nearly-invisible dimple. Then she pauses, rolls her shoulders as she runs her hands down Stile’s chest, licks her palm and curls her hand around his cock. “I’m not due to ovulate for another six days.”

(They keep the time through measuring the steady rhythm of the growth and shedding of the lining of Lydia’s uterus, and the first time they’d done this, Lydia made him promise that if her period was ever late after they’d screwed, he’d take the bat to her stomach, hard. Stiles would do it, he thinks, but he’d hate himself a little bit for it, so he always asks.) 

The ring on her left hand is cold where it’s pressed against the skin of his neck, and Lydia wears the first half of her chosen surname like a mantle – like grief – around the curve of her shoulders and the shadows of her clavicle when she sinks down, letting out a breathy sound of pleasure Stiles wants to lick out of her mouth. Jackson had proposed soon after the sheriff killed Melissa, saying that he was planning on waiting until they were older but didn’t think he should risk it now. At least that’s what Lydia had told him once, when they were still stupid on grief after Danny’s death, passing a whiskey bottle back and forth between them with no one sober to keep watch anymore.

Jackson had died a few weeks later, and that’s how they discovered werewolves weren’t immune to the virus. Couldn’t go freak, thank god, but couldn’t survive it if infected, either. 

“C’mere.” Stiles gasps out, wanting it to sound like a request, but the sound of it slides over the taste of desire on his tongue, twists itself into a plea instead. “C’mere.” He repeats, voice hitched and drawn tight already as his hips rise without his permission.

Lydia clenches down around him, jacking her hips forward in a way that is hard and graceless, both of them having given up on grace long before this. “Yeah.” She murmurs, the precise way she delivers words falling apart. Leaning forward, she bites into his mouth without so much as a polite brush of lips beforehand, tangles their tongues together and forces his jaw open against hers, nails bitten down to the quick still managing to scratch his scalp in a way that makes him moan, helpless to the feel of her.

One of his hands is curled around her hip, thumb brushing the sharp jut of bone, the other fumbling against her clit, the stretch of her around his dick.

It’s pretty hot, is all he’s saying. 

Lydia leans back again, bracing her hands on Stiles’ chest and grinding _down_ , hard enough that heat rips up his spine, clenches and burns tightly between his hipbones. Stiles isn’t sure if this is one of those times when she wants to be watched or not, so he does what he knows how to do, slipping one finger into her cunt, beside himself, and stroking gently as he can, thumbing over her clit again and listening to her sharp, bitten-off whine. If she wants him to watch her, she will grab his chin and force his eyes onto her face, but for now he keeps his eyes on what he’s doing, because that’s a gorgeous enough thing to watch anyway.

“No.” Lydia snarls after he twists his finger inside her, and Stiles freezes automatically, even the rhythm of his hips stopping at the sound. His hands still, too, and the heat around his fingers feel a little like torture.

“What do you want, what –” He gasps as she reaches down and pulls his hand away from her, pinning it onto the bed.

“You can close your eyes,” She starts, breath making her chest heave as she builds them back into a rhythm. “You can think of Derek.”

While she says it like it’s a gift, an option Stiles can choose _if he so pleases_ , she means it like an command, adjusting the thrust of her hips and the movement of her hands and the bite of her kisses until it’s rough and forceful, dragging long, soft whines from Stiles.

She’s fucking him the way she thinks Derek did, when he and Derek were screwing around, before Derek got sick and blew his brains out, not knowing that werewolves couldn’t go violent the way that humans did and not wanting to risk becoming a freak that grew claws once a month. It’s wrong, of course – Derek had fucked slow, gentle, almost hesitant, like he _knew_ he’d fucked up everything else but didn’t want to fuck up this – but Lydia’s trying to do for Stiles what she did for all the other people she’d collected for herself. Keep him sharp and determined and the best version of Stiles possible, even if it meant mindgames and powerplays. 

He gets it, appreciates it, even, and his imagination is vivid enough that he can still lean his head back, close his eyes and picture it, picture the way Derek had looked when he was riding Stiles, pupils blown wide and expression on his face like Stiles was something wonderful. 

“Fuck.” He curses out, thinks that this should be weirder than it is but isn’t. “Fuck, Derek, I’m gonna –” It falls into another half-gasp, bordering on a moan, and Lydia presses their foreheads together, chapped lips running for a moment over his nose, his cheeks, his chin.

“It’s okay, Stiles, let go, let me take care of it.” She whispers, breath against Stiles’ lips, hand twined with his and pressing into the mattress above their heads. He can feel the key resting on his chest, feel the way Lydia’s hand is working on herself, feel the ring on her finger between his.

He comes, and it feels like he’s being consumed by it. 

When he floats back into his mind again, Lydia is sprawled overtop him, panting tiredly. 

“Fuck.” He mumbles again, using one shaking hand to tug the dusty blanket overtop of them. Lydia laughs, and Stiles runs his fingers up and down Lydia’s spine, into the tangles of her three inch long hair. 

“I’m thinking about just making them dreadlocks. We both should. Less sunburn on our necks.” These words are said on a sigh as she adjusts her weight, curling around him.

“That’d be hot.” Stiles says, for lack of anything else to say. “We’d look like wannabe white Rastafarians. Totally hot.” 

His witty repartee, unpractised as it is, is fading.

That doesn’t make him as sad as it should, probably, he realizes as he starts to follow Lydia’s lead and fall asleep. 

.:.:.

They only stay in the house for four days before they leave again.

Another rule learned: don’t stay in one place for too long. Attachments to things you can’t take with you just makes everything worse.

.:.:.

Stiles doesn’t like thinking about Scott. He doesn’t like thinking about a lot of things, honestly, but if he were to make a list of all the things he doesn’t like thinking about, he is as close to sure as he can be that Scott would be at the very top.

Sometimes he thinks it’d be more appropriate if it was his dad holding first place, it’s just… It’s hard to have any barriers around a certain subject of thought when at least once a week he shudders awake from a nightmare that’s just the memory of him shooting his dad in the head with the gun he started making Stiles carry, Melissa’s blood still framing a vague, venomous smile. 

So, Stiles doesn’t like thinking about Scott. Lydia, when Danny was still around to play mediator to two somewhat clashing personalities – or, in his words, types of bitchiness – used to try and make him, citing that they should try to avoid developing psychological weakness. Stiles used to spit back something about Jackson, after that, because he was still fresh from grief, fresh from seeing Scott die, and he’d wanted to make _someone_ hurt as much as he did. 

He’s not proud of what he was like, in the beginning of this. 

But the reason he doesn’t like thinking about Scott is sitting heavy over his lungs, crushing the air out of him as he stares at the _Transformers_ DVD jacket, where it stands in a light coating of dust on the movie rack of an abandoned convenience store-cum-pharmacy.

They are there so Lydia can transfer some of her blood into his veins, like they’ve been doing for nigh on a year now after she got bit by a freak and felt nothing, needles and rubber tubing acting like an umbilical cord connecting the insides of their elbows. (“This would be easier if I could just give you a bone marrow transplant.” She’d complained once, huffing, and Stiles had hummed back something that sounded like an affirmative, his head turned away from the sight of a needle under his skin.) 

Lydia is sitting on a counter and Stiles is sitting on the floor, that being the only reason he’s on level to see the _Transformers_ DVD at all, and Stiles can’t _breathe_.

It’s stupid, stupid that this reminds him of anything, stupid that he’s getting so affected by this, but once upon a time he and Scott used to make a tradition out of watching terrible movies together, so Scott could enjoy some explosions without worrying about a plot that matters and Stiles could make snarky comments that both of them would laugh at. _Transformers_ , incidentally, had been their favourite, because it gave Stiles lots of canon fodder and Scott Meagan Fox’s cleavage, and that had been enough for them.

Stiles draws in a breath that has to force its way past the tightening in his throat, the sound of it _wrecked_ , Lydia freezing. “What is it?” She hisses, removing the needle out of her skin quickly, dropping to do the same for Stiles. She follows his eye line to the object in question, frowning curiously but shifting her weight so she’s in front of him anyway, blocking his view. “Stiles?” She asks softly, touching his cheekbone. He flicks his eyes to her, both of them pretending that they’re dry. 

“It’s fine, it’s whatever.” He shrugs, standing up. “You know what, we should leave, get some more raiding done before we bounce, we don’t want to stay in civilization when it gets dark.” 

“Right.” Lydia says, glancing back at the DVD before shrugging herself. She lets it go, and he wants to kiss her for that; curiosity is obvious in her eyes, in the way she follows his movements more sharply than usual, but she doesn’t press. 

There is an old woman in a torn nightgown standing frozen outside, crusted cuts up and down her arms, blank eyes and twisted smile twitching occasionally as she sways. When she sees them leave the shop, she screeches, running towards them.

It scares Stiles sometimes, how easy this routine is, dropping the straps of the sled from his shoulders, adjusting the bat in his hand as he takes down the freak in three easy strokes. 

One; across the side of her head, like it’s baseball and her face happens to be the ball.

Two; on her neck. She’s on the ground at this point, and the extra bracing the pavement gives allows for the blow to create a sharp, sickening crack.

Three; on her head again, caving the skull in completely, just in case.

When she’s stopped twitching, he and Lydia both freeze, listening to hear if any more freaks were coming, attracted by the commotion. There’s nothing, and it’s only after Stiles has the straps back on and they’re moving through the city quietly that he lets himself glean a little satisfaction from the memory.

It was a freak that killed Scott, after all, and Stiles has learned to take happiness from whatever he could in life. 

.:.:.

“I used to think I was in love with you.” Stiles says, takes another drag of his cigarette as he looks at Lydia, a full backpack gracing her shoulders and a length of rope they don’t have a use for yet looping around her hips. 

They found a bulk package of Marlboros and are currently smoking through them viciously, lighting the beginnings of a new one with the stubs of the other person’s, a constant exchange of cigarette kisses.

Lydia leans forward and touches the tip of her cigarette to the end of his, breathing in harshly until the end of _hers_ goes cherry red. “I know.” She says simply, clenching her teeth around the smoke like it’s a challenge and flaring her nostrils to let it out. When she’s done she raises her eyebrow at him, prompting; Stiles’ cigarette is still shaking from his twitching hand, one of the many tells that means he hasn’t said all he has to say, hasn’t finished his thought through to the end.

Lydia waits. 

Stiles breathes in around the cigarette and hates the taste of it but hates the taste of empty air more, hates the feeling of the smoke in his lungs but hates the feeling of his heartbeat more. He shrugs. “I wasn’t.” The words act as the vessels that carry the smoke away, towards Lydia. She opens her mouth and breathes them both in, the words and the smoke.

No point in wasting a good cigarette. 

“I know.” She repeats, and her empty hand finds the one of his that’s curled around the aluminum bat, squeezes the knuckles stretching the skin there thin.

And there might be other people out there – real people, not freaks – that they’ll find, there might be a functioning military base holding the last dregs of humanity; hell, Deaton had seemed indestructible, he might be running around the great American wasteland just like them, scraping through survival with white knuckles and clenched teeth and cigarette smoke. 

It’s enough, Stiles thinks, Lydia keeping open silence at his side and the key glinting in the light. He coughs, smoke-roughened, and leans into her side as they walk, lets his shoulders curve inwards like he has the weight of the world on his shoulders but straightens out after a moment when Lydia unthinkingly digs her hand into his muscle to ease whatever ache she thinks is there. 

This is enough.


End file.
